This time, Elon Musk didn’t propose a wrestling match. But it’s just like. According to The Informationthe billionaire once again asked the American justice system to prevent OpenAI from transforming into a for-profit company. The boss of SpaceX and Tesla had nevertheless participated in the creation of this pioneering entity of generative AI. But he left the adventure in 2018. Since then, Elon Musk has fiercely criticized the evolution of OpenAI.
The first target of his criticism? The progressive “closure” of the research carried out by the organization. As its name suggests, OpenAI was built with the desire to put AI at the service of all. He initially put a lot of emphasis on the desire to share his work in “open source”. The company now says the recipes for its most advanced models are too sensitive to put in just anyone’s hands. An idea that is debated in the tech community. Some industry pundits, including Turing Prize winner Yann Le Cun (Meta’s AI director), believe that open-source transparency is the best way to make this technology safe. Other researchers, however, have similar views to OpenAI and criticize the diffusion of AI models.
Whatever he says, Elon Musk did not completely resolve it when he launched his own startup xAI. Like the French Mistral, it revealed the “weights” of its Grok AI model, which allows anyone to use this version and build adjacent tools. But it does not reveal the data on which the model was trained. The secret ingredient thanks to which it can hope to develop models more competitive than those of the competition.
The structure of OpenAI, however, is the main target of Elon Musk’s criticism. In 2019, the nonprofit entity established a capped for-profit subsidiary. “We began to understand, from the beginning of 2017, that building artificial general intelligence was going to require immense computing power […] We all understood that we would need a lot more capital to carry out our mission – billions of dollars a year, which was a lot more than we, and Elon in particular, thought we could raise as a purpose-driven entity. non-profit”, argues OpenAI on his website.
Merge OpenAI to Tesla
She’s not wrong. Nvidia’s sophisticated chips cost 15 to 30,000 euros each. And to compete with OpenAI, groups like Meta are buying them by the hundreds of thousands. Building these models also requires attracting and retaining cutting-edge researchers that the tech giants chase away on a daily basis with big checks. OpenAI is not the first charitable entity to open a for-profit subsidiary to finance its mission.
What is unprecedented in its situation is the success that this branch has encountered. OpenAI has attracted significant investment and its valuation has skyrocketed. It now stands at $157 billion. “The for-profit subsidiary has too much commercial and financial success to remain truly subordinate to the board,” Bruce Kogut, professor of strategy and founder of the “Business, AI and Democracy” project at L’Express, told L’Express last September. Columbia Business School. According to several American media, OpenAI is also trying to evolve its structure towards a simpler B-Corp type business model.
Those who supported the initial project may not approve of this change. And if it comes to fruition, the sharing of goods between the non-profit sphere and the commercial branch will have to be done rigorously, given the amounts involved. What annoys Elon Musk lies elsewhere, however. In a text published last MarchOpenAI thus asserts that Elon Musk initially supported without reservation the idea of creating a for-profit subsidiary: “Elon wanted a majority stake […] and be the CEO.” OpenAI specifies, however, that it did not agree with Elon Musk on the contours of this project: “We considered it contrary to our mission to allow any individual absolute control over OpenAI. He then suggested merging OpenAI with Tesla […] Shortly after, he chose to leave OpenAI, saying our probability of success was zero and that he was going to build an AGI champion within Tesla.”
Whether the courts prove him right or wrong, Elon Musk in any case gained significant support in November, with the victory of Donald Trump. The boss of Tesla and SpaceX who put his financial resources and his social network at the service of the Republican now has the ear of the re-elected president who will take office on January 20, 2025. A big problem for Sam Altman who has grandiose plans infrastructure to support its race in AI. And will have difficulty making them a reality if the White House puts obstacles in the way. On December 1, Sam Altman told Fox News that Donald Trump will be “very good” for the AI sector. It remains to be seen whether he will be sensitive to the compliment.